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Advice for keeping your HR staffs sharp

Paul Rowson, World at Work

"Stay the course … and put your shoulder to the flywheel," said Paul Rowson, managing director of WorldatWork about the current challenges human resource managers and their employees face due to federal pay cuts.

Rowson told In-Depth's Francis Rose that the first mission is "to get the right people in the right jobs at the right time," which he said starts with getting competent HR professionals.

In the HR Closing the Gap Report, 60 percent of the Office of Personnel Management's Chief Human Capital Officer's Council (CHCO) reported that their staffs either did not have the competencies to succeed in the future or that they possessed those capabilities only to a moderate or limited extent, Rowson said.

Fortunately for federal HR professionals, Rowson said the Government Accountability Office, the Office of Management and Budget and CHCO are making collective efforts to help HR staffs do their jobs better.

"Sometimes when everyone finds out that they really are in same boat … They kind of roll up their sleeves and work together," Rowson added.

In order to improve HR operations, Rowson said that OPM created the HR University
--a program geared to focus on employee training and to provide them with external resources to create a more competent model for HR staffs to follow.

Rowson said training is key to operations yet is often considered a luxury during cutbacks.

Rowson said aligning employee talent, avoiding invaluable work duplication and making hard choices are important to the workforce as HR staffs seek to make the best of a difficult situation such as a pay freeze.

"There's no substitute for pay if you need extra money," he said, but offering people opportunities in succession planning and advancement can be a very important reward in external recruitment as well as employee retention.